# Token Utility

AIA plays several important roles in the ecosystem:

1. **Voting Governance**: Users holding more than 1 million AIA tokens for over 3 months are eligible to participate in on-chain proposals and voting. The number of AIA tokens held determines the influence of community members in governance.
2. **Medium of Exchange and Asset**: AIA serves as a medium of exchange, allowing users to participate in and trade various applications built on AIA Chain. It can also be used as a multi-functional and liquid asset, performing standard functions like bookkeeping and value storage in applications, as well as more complex functions enabled by smart contracts, promoting interoperability and composability within the ecosystem.
3. **Value Creation and Distribution**: Similar to the philosophy of Optimism Collective, the economic design of AIA aims to create value for token holders, contributors, builders, users, and community members through effective revenue redeployment. By driving demand for network block space, income is generated and distributed to those supporting public product development and participating in staking for AIA mining, further increasing demand for block space and creating a positive feedback loop.
4. **Scarcity and Economic Value**: The annual circulating supply of AIA will increase gradually, and as network use cases unlock and the number of users grows, the same number of tokens will be required for more economic activities. Mechanisms like the ongoing Astar incubator program will further influence the circulation of tokens, promoting healthy monetary dynamics and ecosystem growth.

In conclusion, AIA is endowed with basic functions such as payment, staking, rewards, and governance, while its value distribution mechanism creates significant opportunities and value for all participants within the ecosystem. However, there are still some unresolved questions regarding how to balance or maximize the economic utility of AIA in the future:

* How can we prevent large token holders (whales) from colluding and harming the interests of regular token holders?
* How can we further enrich the actual use cases of AIA to differentiate it from typical public chain tokens, while complying with current regulatory policies?

These questions do not have immediate solutions, but as AIA Chain's technology and ecosystem mature, and as the value of the AIA token fluctuates with external factors, we hope to bring some positive direction for the community. Regardless, the long-term interests of AIA token holders, under the collaboration of the AIA Chain Foundation and the AIA Chain DAO, will always be prioritized. In the following sections, we will discuss how to guide the growth of community governance protocols.


---

# Agent Instructions: Querying This Documentation

If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation dynamically by asking a question.

Perform an HTTP GET request on the current page URL with the `ask` query parameter:

```
GET https://aia-chain-1.gitbook.io/aialabs/basics/tokenomics/token-utility.md?ask=<question>
```

The question should be specific, self-contained, and written in natural language.
The response will contain a direct answer to the question and relevant excerpts and sources from the documentation.

Use this mechanism when the answer is not explicitly present in the current page, you need clarification or additional context, or you want to retrieve related documentation sections.